Cyberbullying in Sydney-area schools ‘epidemic,’ psychologist warns

Cyberbullying, on social media sites like Facebook, has become an epidemic at Sydney area schools, local psychologist Harman Singh says. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

SYDNEY — A psychologist who has worked with teenage students troubled by cyberbullying says the issue is out of control in local schools, with incidents occurring several times a day.

“I think what has happened is it’s become an epidemic and where do we start? We’ve created a monster, because I think we handed technology to children without training them on the use of it,” said Harman Singh.

“I think this should be part of the curriculum. Sensible use of social media should be in the curriculum, and I think there should be strict consequences.

“I don’t care if it happens outside the school. If it involves two students who are registered with the school board, it should be dealt with.”

Singh, who saw students as part of her job with the Cape Breton District Health Authority for 16 years, said even her own children have been affected by cyberbullying.

She said the family dealt with the issue by talking about it openly and helping the children understand that it is wrong and should be stopped.

If the perpetrators won’t stop, she said, the best way to deal with it is to block the sites or messages from the perpetrators. That tactic worked with her children, Singh said.

“It’s so much easier to say nasty things on media than it is to actually say it to somebody in their face.”

It doesn’t put a stop to all bullying, she said, but it helps reduce one method.

Singh said she has seen messages targeted at her own children and others and, based on what she’s seen, there is plenty of evidence that cyberbullying is happening daily, and multiple times a day.

“Cyberbullying is very common,” Singh said. “It’s scary. Some of the things the children show me, I’ll tell the children if you are seeing this, you have a responsibility to report it.”

Cape Breton Regional Police spokeswoman Desiree Vassallo said police investigated more than 100 complaints of cyberbullying last year that included messages on Facebook, other websites or through texting.

However, few if any charges have been laid.

“For the most part the complaints aren’t usually of a criminal nature,” Vassallo said. “People might be making inappropriate comments or sending a prank, or a family dispute or something like that, but they don’t actually end up constituting a criminal offence that police can pursue.”

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing that can be done, though.

“In a lot of cases, it’s an educational opportunity for the police to talk to the parties who were involved and educate them so that they know how serious these types of things could get and the potential for criminal charges. But I don’t know that our police service has ever laid an official charge in connection to a cyberbullying incident.”

Statistics on the frequency are not readily available, although there are ways to track incidents and sort through them to determine which ones could be labelled cyberbullying.

Part of the problem is that cyberbullying isn’t technically a crime in itself, Vassallo said.

“There’s not officially a code under the national coding system for StatsCan that’s labelled cyberbullying. There’s no charge under the criminal code for that. But there are harassment, or defamation, or threats, or those kinds of things could all apply to cyberbullying.”